Friday, May 13, 2011

Value of the pen.

As well as being a relative luddite who loves typewriters, I also use fountain pens for my journalling and editing. I have a $30 Sheaffer that I use for writing, and a $20 red Sheaffer that I fill with red ink and use for editing. I get so many comments from people about how they 'used to' know how to write with one, and how daunting it is. I have never found it daunting, but more like a small vacation from the tech-heavy world of communication. When I write in my book, I revel in the white, crisp paper, and anticipate how I will lay out my journey through words. It is a way of thinking as much as it is a way of capturing ideas in media. That way, I exercise skills of pre-planning, and following a course of thought. I exercise my anticipation of HOW the words will be read as much as why. See, in handwriting, and it seems a moot point, one always has to be legible. There's no spell-check, no grammatical check, and what I write will not be edited, moved around, reprinted, reposted, retweeted, or otherwise passed out to the world at large.

There's something freeing about being able to put my thoughts out on paper and not have to wait for repercussions. The internet has become very snipey in recent years, with everyone trying to respond with excessive cleverness to everyone else. Don't get me wrong, I believe in freedom of speech and I believe in discourse on every issue. However, sometimes I just want to get things on paper, and not have to rethink them. Not to mention the less-frequent than it used to be accidental save over or deletion of work. Once it's there in ink, it's there.

Come to think of it, I even get perverse pleasure out of spelling things the Canadian way, without that damn red underline that inevitably appears. So much to love about ink on paper, put there by my own hand.